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The Yale Problem Begins in High School

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Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#271

Post by matthewowen »

I have extremely mixed feelings about all of this.

On the one hand, I think the whole point of university is debate, discourse, critical thought. The apparent trend away from liberalism is very distressing.

On the other, I sympathize with the notion that liberalism can often be a way for the privileged to entrench their privilege, and that unprivileged voices don't benefit from it equally. If you're black and you believe that black americans are owed reparations, you probably can't say that freely without expecting some negative repercussions in your future life: you'll be judged and categorized, marked as "uppity". Liberalism doesn't exist in a vacuum: we have to take into account other societal truths when we're evaluating its effects.

I don't have a great handle on how to reconcile all of this.

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#272

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast »

albedoa wrote: post #88
tosseraccount wrote: post #13

Look how Silicon Valley folks treated Brandon Eich when he made a donation to the majority side in a California proposition. It's not just academia where you can't speak freely.

The conversations about Brandon Eich and his views regrettably died down before the Donald Sterling incident. I am still curious today where defenders of Eich fall in the controversy over Sterling. Will anyone who defends Eich or is critical of his detractors come out and say that Sterling should not have received the wrath of the media and public and should not have been punished for expressing his views? Or does yo…

Now don’t be silly Who the fuck gon' bully me if I got a billi? If I got a billi and they're recording me I’m like who cares What I wouldn’t be is on TV stutterin' ta-ta-talkin' scared

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#273

Post by tomp »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #166
cozuya wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I view HN as a forum for professionals so I don't make comments that could negatively impact my professional life here. In that way I think self censure is fine. If you don't agree with my assessment thats fine as well of course. Of course most of the sparse comments I make here are dumb jokes...

The point is, thanks to Social Justice Warriors, you never know what comment could affect your career. Expressing opinion about merits of Angular.js is probably safe. But anything that involves gender - a study, or a remark about distribution of men and women in tech industry - is not to be touched with a ten foot pole if you value your employability. It takes very little to become a victim of a Twitter outrage.

> Expressing opinion about merits of Angular.js is probably safe.

As long as you don't say that Angular is better or anything else that might be construed as you supporting meritocracy...

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#274

Post by lern_too_spel »

sinxoveretothex wrote: post #246
lern_too_spel wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to have bought into fair and balanced horseshit. There are certain views that are morally superior to others, just as there are certain hamburgers that are better than others. Taking rights away from other people loosely based on ancient superstitions (the Bible says nothing about allowing gays to marry but says a lot about how to punish them -- the only reason Eich and his ilk aren't politically promoting t…

Why is it necessary to "come down hard" on people who express morally wreak (or even stupid) viewpoints? Surely, putting forth a better argument or, at least, ignoring them is a far more morally superior response than suppressing their speech? I've recently read about Bobby Sands (who was a IRA member who starved himself to death) and am reminded of that monk who lit themself on fire in protest. I think an interestin…

You think it's OK for a majority to say that racial Jews should not have property rights and then make it so? Eich achieved hos goal of writing oppression into the state constitution. Ignoring or tolerating promotion of oppression doesn't make it go away. (That's exactly the fair and balanced horseshit I was talking about.) Tolerating morally neutral actions is entirely different from tolerating morally bad actions.

Pretending that Eich's treatment for promoting oppression (or even the downvotes I've received for stating my views or you may have received for stating yours -- I've seen a lot of handwringing in this thread about maintaining multiple HN accounts and self-censoring themselves on HN as if that was some great horror) are in any way equivalent to actually taking away rights is another form of fair and balanced horseshit.

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#275

Post by coreyp_1 »

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #168
coreyp_1 wrote: post #137

This directly relates to us in tech. Specifically, there is a huge push to reach out to women and girls in CS. I am not opposed to females in CS at all. I will encourage males and females alike to pursue it, because I see CS as the great equalizer; the only thing that matters is what you produce. What I can't stand are these "Women in technology" conferences and workshops to "close the (gender) gap". Why? Because if…

I see CS as the great equalizer; the only thing that matters is what you produce. Say's law does not apply to CS, which is largely a demand-side field with strictly ordinal utility functions and evaluation criteria that are not necessarily technical. As such, what you produce is not innately "the great equalizer".

I'm not referencing Say's law. I'm referring to the very real phenomenon that I experienced as a freelancer, in which nobody cared to know anything about me other than whether or not I could get the job done. It was about skill. And, since many of my jobs were entirely remote, I assume that they never knew my gender (or whether or not I was wearing pants on Friday, but that is another discussion).

In the Open Source community, most interactions are online through forums, issue queues, etc. Gender is rarely implied. In this situation, all that matters is what you produce.

In academia, publishing does not rely on gender. Many times, the reviews of your work are double-blind, so that there is no identifying information at all.

Therefore, I stand behind my statement, that CS is the great equalizer, and the only thing that matters is what you produce.

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#276

Post by leroy_masochist »

For a while now I've thought that 4-year residential college is a dying model. Here's how I view the value proposition of college and how it is being replaced by tech:

* Validation of raw talent by a third party (admissions office) --> can be done by technology today in ways impossible 10 years ago and hard to imagine 30 years ago

* Socialization around other people in the top decile (or higher) of book-smarts --> can largely be done by online communities (not a full replacement for interpersonal interaction but better than what was available before)

* Access to top-tier employers who didn't have time to look through every candidate out there, so economized their recruiting efforts at places where smart young people are concentrated --> this model made largely obsolete by internet

* Access to lots of obscure books at college library --> made completely obsolete by internet

* Access to great lectures --> made obsolete by internet / MOOCs

* Access to a diversity of opinions, the exposure to which will make you a better and more informed person --> these days only applicable if you come from a very sheltered conservative background....otherwise college just reinforces existing biases

If I had to choose between two candidates with the same proficiency in a testable skill set (JavaScript, GAAP accounting, laying brick, whatever else), at this point I'd probably prefer someone who spent four years working on a fishing boat, or trying to make it as a musician, or on a church mission, or hiking the PCT / CDT / AT, or in the Marines, or something else challenging, over someone who went to an elite undergrad institution. They just seem more and more like indoctrination mills that crank out entitled little whiners.

//grumpy old man rant over

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#277

Post by flopto »

Pyxl101 wrote: post #234
flopto wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poor blacks, unlike poor whites, are subject to mass incarceration. Edit: this is technically incorrect, see dragonwriter below.

Because (at least in part) they commit crime at far higher rates per capita. Black men commit about half of all murders in the USA, despite being about 13% of the population. The statistics are similar for many other crimes. 39% of people arrested for murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault were black from 2011-2013 per FBI statistics [1] [3]. In 2010, 62,593 blacks were victims of white violence,…

Policing perpetuates poverty and thus crime by forcing poor, black men to deal with the criminal justice system from an early age. Court fees, court appearances, civil asset forfeiture, jail time, and property damage from police searches are all burdens that poor, black, law-abiding people bear, not to mention wrongful conviction.

Edit: missed this line in your comment before:

> Why this is the case is an interesting problem that I hope we can tackle, better understand, and attempt to solve as a society

This is what Black Lives Matter is about. They understand the problem (often by living through it) and are focused on tackling it. Because they don't focus too much on helping other people to understand the problem, this might not be clear to you.

Edit: I was about to respond to your reply, but it looks like you deleted it.

> too many topics seem taboo to reason about objectively

I think the disagreement is about where this reasoning can/should happen. From the perspective of the BLM movement, it is not their job to educate people about race. I think this reasoning has already happened at an academic level and has concluded that (to summarize very broadly) white people have a whole lot of privilege.

> Do we have that evidence?

Yes, I believe so.

[1] http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/bobo/files/2010_racialized_...

[2] Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

[3] Alice Goffman, On the Run (this is an ethnography, so you may need to have an understanding of ethnographic methods to accept the evidence here as "data")

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#278

Post by jonesb6 »

lumberjack wrote: post #25

These people act this way because they are elitist. They think they know what should be better than anyone else and therefore there is no need for debate or for rights like free speech. I find that quite ironic because presumably, these people subscribe to left leaning ideologies. But maybe there isn't so much of a contradiction. They are simply more elitist than they are anything else. They don't really stand for eq…

I read a post on reddit the other day that left vs right is really a horse shoe. That the far left and far right are very close to each other. I thought it was fairly intuitive.

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#279

Post by moistgorilla »

thomnottom wrote: post #206
Retric wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For one thing it lowers the bar before people think your indigent. Depending on industry it can often make it harder to find a job. On the whole it's generally viewed as a low status symbol. Granted this is mostly from the east coast of the US (DC). And having a styled bearded seems to make a large difference.

All I can say is that I and my friends in the NYC and Philly region working (mostly) in pharmaceutical and financial industries do not generally experience this. But obviously that would be anecdotal.

> financial

Isn't finance the place where being clean shaven is almost necessary if you want to succeed?

Re: The Yale Problem Begins in High School

#280

Post by Jtsummers »

1812Overture wrote: post #257
RodericDay wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you think a history class should handle a student who wants to discuss Holocaust as a hoax? How about a law student who thinks rape is a victim-less crime? My answer used to be "why, if you have the truth on your side, just prove 'em wrong and move on! so much the better for your standpoint!". However, it can get extremely tedious. A stubborn student can "plausible deniability" his way into extremely metaphysi…

I think a history class that can't make a strong argument that the holocaust wasn't a hoax and a law class that can't make the argument that rape victims exist are in VERY serious trouble. Being able to debunk such looney claims is very valuable for students so they should develop these skills not be shielded from exposure to them.

In general I agree with you, but having dealt with (less severe) examples of this with some coworkers, it's really, really annoying. When someone simply states their (contrary or contrarian) viewpoint and refuses to admit any evidence presented is valid, you can't win. It's an exercise in futility.

I had a guy simply insisting that evolution wasn't real. "Ok", I say, "what about (found some reports demonstrating observable changes in a species over time)?". "Oh, well sure, microevolution is real, but big things can't change, like humans." And around we go again and again. (Same guy believes that we can't actually analyze someone's genome and that people become resistant to antibiotics, not diseases, and 9/11 was an inside job.)

Show them video, show them photographs, bring in first-person witnesses, and they'll find a way to dismiss all of it. Either because they truly believe what they're saying, or, like a current coworker, they're just a contrarian asshole. That doesn't mean we shield people from these views, but we have to, at some point, accept that not all viewpoints are equal, some simply have no merit and aren't worth discussing beyond acknowledging that some people believe them (would you really want to engage with a flat-earth believer? I mean, it was fun once, but that was enough for me).

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